Xi and 37 world leaders wrapped up a three-day forum in Beijing with pledges to ensure that projects in his new Silk Road are financially sustainable and green following concerns about debt and environmental damage.

“We are committed to supporting to open, clean and green development and rejecting protectionism,” Xi told journalists at the end of the forum, without taking questions.

His signature foreign policy aims to reinvent the ancient Silk Road to connect Asia to Europe and Africa through massive investments in maritime, road and rail projects — with hundreds of billions of dollars in financing from Chinese banks.

But critics say BRI is a plan to boost Beijing’s global influence, riddled with opaque deals favouring Chinese companies and saddling nations with debt and environmental damage.

The US, India and some European nations have looked at the project with suspicion. Washington did not send any representatives to the meeting.

“This year’s forum sends a clear message: more and more friends and partners will join in the Belt and Road co-operation,” Xi said.

Xi said enterprises will be the main driver in all Belt and Road projects and market principles will apply, with governments providing a supporting role.

“This will make the projects more sustainable and create a fair and non-discriminatory environment for foreign investors,” Xi said.

Xi said that business leaders meeting at a side event signed some $64 billion worth of deals during the forum, without providing details.

Leaders from Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America meeting at the picturesque Yanqi Lake outside Beijing agreed in a joint communique that enterprises will act as main players in Belt and Road projects.

The gathering included Russian President Vladimir Putin, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, whose nation became the first G7 member to join Belt and Road, and Pakistan’s Imran Khan.

– Project ‘sustainability –

The massive projects, financed mainly through Chinese bank loans and investments, have raised concerns that poorer countries are being saddled with debt — Sri Lanka turned over a deep-sea port to China for 99 years after it was unable to repay loans.

So far Chinese companies and workers have emerged as the primary beneficiaries as they are tapped to build the China-financed infrastructure in other developing countries.

A communique released at the end of the meeting said leaders encouraged multilateral development banks and other international financial institutions to support projects “in fiscally sustainable ways” and mobilise private capital in line with local needs.

“We emphasise the importance of economic, social, fiscal, financial and environmental sustainability of projects,” it said.

The draft communique says BRI will welcome developed countries and international investors to participate in the projects.

– ‘Civilised and soft’ –

China’s finance ministry released guidelines Thursday for assessing financial risk and debt sustainability to apply to projects in BRI countries.

But the document notes that countries already facing payment problems or in the process of restructuring payments “does not automatically mean that debt is unsustainable in a forward-looking sense”.

“Faced with this rising resistance for the past year and a half and this debt image … China is trying to reposition (BRI) and send a reassuring message,” said Nadege Rolland, a senior fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research, a US-based think tank.

But “let’s see how it is put into practice”, she said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin praised China for acting in a “civilised and soft manner” and he took a veiled swipe at the United States.

“Nobody wants sanctions, nobody wants trade wars, except those who start them. These sanctions harm the world economy,” Putin said, adding that China “currently defends liberal values”.

BRI projects have faced pushback in some countries. In Malaysia, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad cancelled some planned works and renegotiated a rail project cutting 30 percent off the price tag.

But Mahathir and other leaders attending the summit had fulsome praise for BRI.

Nearly a week after the bombing, the road leading to Raju’s house in the eastern city is flanked by posters and photographs of the 40-year-old father of two who blocked the attacker at the church door.

A stream of well-wishers queue to express condolences to his widow, a Sunday school teacher.

Raju was one of 29 people, including 14 children, that media reports say died in the blast at Zion, one of three churches and three hotels targeted by Jihadist bombers.

But about 600 people who were inside at the time escaped the human bomb. The dead from the other two churches make up the majority of the 253 overall death toll.

“When he felt suspicious about the bomber he could have run away to safety but I think he chose to scuffle with him in order to stop him from entering the church,” his father Velusami Raju told AFP.

“I feel very proud that he saved so many lives, especially so many children,” he added.

– Jihadist target –

The east coast city is thought to have become a target as the National Thowheeth Jama’ath (NTJ) blamed for the attacks came from the region.

Zion church was packed at the time and there were dozens of children fresh from Sunday school. Raju had volunteered to help manage the crowds, according to witnesses.

When he spotted an unfamiliar man carrying two huge bags, Raju confronted him and asked him to leave them outside. The bomb went off during the argument.

A number of other children and parents who were outside at the time were killed along with him.

“He was a very good man,” said Raju’s father, who described his eldest son as the “pillar” of their large family.

“Every memory we shared is so precious… He was the main support for our family, for his three younger sisters and younger brother,” the 63-year-old said.

Father and son spoke just minutes before the explosion, Velusami said. Raju promised to call him back once the service was over.

The next time his phone rang, it was a parishioner calling to tell him his son had been killed in a blast.

Raju’s younger sister also died in the bombing, along with her husband and 20-month-old son.

“I have lost my grandson but at the same time I feel so proud that my son saved so many children, so other families don’t have to go through what we are going through,” the retired mill worker said, choking back tears.

– Services halted –

Tucked away on a leafy street, the church is now surrounded by heavy security and investigators comb the premises for evidence.

The congregation does not know when a service will be held there again.

The other two churches attacked were Roman Catholic and the church’s leaders have suspended all services across the country until Sri Lankan authorities can guarantee security.

Raju was a success story in the Muslim-majority town, setting up his own company at the age of 28 and raising a family with his high school sweetheart.

To his loved ones, the moments leading up to his death serve as yet another reminder of the scale of their loss.

“A lot of army men came to the funeral and saluted his coffin because of his courage. I hope my son’s actions inspire others to be brave,” Velusami said.

“Now that he’s gone, I have no idea how we will go on but I am praying and asking God for help.”

The incident comes as authorities are beefing up security ahead of the popular emperor’s abdication next week after a 30-year reign.

Officials of the Tokyo junior high school found the knives Friday at the desk used daily by the 12-year-old prince, public broadcaster NHK and other news reports said, quoting unnamed investigators.

Hisahito, who began attending the school this month, was not in the classroom when the knives are believed to have been left.

There were no reports of any injuries or damage at the school, the reports said, adding that police did not find any threatening note related to the case.

Security camera footage showed a man with a helmet trespassing on the school grounds at around noon, they said.

Police were searching for the middle-aged man who was dressed as a construction worker.

A police spokeswoman declined to comment while no immediate confirmation was available from the school.

Threats to the imperial family are relatively rare. In 1975, Akihito was almost hit by a Molotov cocktail in Okinawa, a major World War II battlefield where there was strong anti-emperor sentiment.

The incident comes as Japan is preparing for the abdication on Tuesday of Akihito, the first monarch to relinquish the throne of the world’s oldest imperial family for two centuries.

Akihito’s eldest son, 59-year-old Crown Prince Naruhito, will take the throne the following day in a series of ceremonies.

Hisahito is the son of Naruhito’s younger brother and the last eligible male heir.

Japan’s centuries-old succession would be broken if Hisahito does not have a male child as the Imperial Household Law, in place since 1947, does not allow women to ascend the Chrysanthemum Throne.

Culture Minister Vira Rojpojanarat presents a souvenir to Ibu Dewi Wahab, special adviser to Indonesia’s minister of foreign affairs at the opening in Jakarta on Wednesday night. Photo courtesy of Culture Ministry

“The animation is beautiful and it’s a wonderful project. Thailand’s Culture Ministry has brought the mural depicting the Ramayana epic to life through this movie,” Ibu Dewi Wahab, special adviser to Indonesia’s minister of foreign affairs told The Nation Weekend at the opening in Jakarta on Wednesday night.

Directed by Atipat Kamolpet, the hour-long animation portraying the Ramakien, as the Thai version of the Ramayana is known, has been cleverly transposed from 2D murals at the Temple of the Emerald Buddha into a 3D animation for the big screen, with characters’ moves imitating gestures of khon masked dance.

This project is part of a yearlong calendar of activities based on khon, which in November |was added to Unesco’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

“As Indonesia and Thailand share the same culture on the Ramayana, we will learn from Thailand how to preserve this heritage by using the new technique [animation] to pass the story on to our young generations,” she added.

The 8th Meeting of the Asean Ministers Responsible for Culture and Art (AMCA) in Yogyakarta on October 25 designated the year 2019 as Asean Cultural Year.

Deputy PM Wissanu Krea-ngam with Indonesian guests.

“By enhancing our cultural ties, we raise awareness of the Asean identity as well as foster peace and social stability in the community. Cooperation in culture and arts |is thus vital to strengthening mutual understanding and bonding relationships within our region. read a statement from the AMCA.

“The Kingdom of Thailand and the Republic of Indonesia have had a close and tight relationship since ancient times. We have enjoyed cooperation and exchange programmes under Asean for decades,” Deputy Prime Minister Wissanu Krea-ngam said in his opening speech at the theatre in Yogyakarta on Thursday night.

“Now that it has been shown here in Indonesia, the animation road show will travel to Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia, countries that share the same Ramayana culture which is influenced by India,” added Culture Minister Vira Rojpojanarat.

To celebrate the 70th anniversary of bilateral relationships next year, Thailand and Indonesia are planning to further extend their cooperation on cultural exchange.

Members of the White House Correspondents’ Association, or WHCA, will be decked out in bow ties and gowns at the downtown Washington Hilton.

Trump, however, will be 685 miles (1100 kilometers) away in Green Bay, Wisconsin, for a rally with his baseball cap-wearing supporters.

And he’s almost guaranteed to devote a portion of his speech — like most of his speeches — to haranguing the “fake news media” or “enemy of the people.”

Although there’s nothing obligatory about attending WHCA dinners, presidents have usually done so at some point during their time in office every year since the inaugural version in 1921.

Ronald Reagan was the last absentee in 1981 and he had a decent excuse: being recently shot in an assassination attempt.

Trump, however, has boycotted what he calls the “boring” and “negative” party for three years in a row — his entire presidency so far.

The gala used to be a glamorous affair where hundreds of journalists, Hollywood celebrities and the president were entertained by a top-drawer comedian or other talent.

Now the celebs have drained away and this year even the comedian is missing. A presidential historian, Ron Chernow, will deliver the main speech instead.

“Killing the White House Correspondents’ Dinner,” runs the headline of a Columbia Journalism Review article amounting to an obituary for the formerly revered fixture.

– ‘Insulting, confrontational’ –

Underlining the snub, Trump has ordered staff, including chief press secretary Sarah Sanders, to also refuse invitations.

It’s the latest shot in what the president sees as his war against a media machine refusing to give him fair coverage.

Trump’s main weapon is Twitter, which he uses daily to reach some 60 million followers. Millions more follow him on other platforms.

As Sanders said in 2017, Twitter “gives him a communications tool… that isn’t filtered through media bias.”

The other main way of bypassing potentially critical outlets is his extraordinary relationship with Fox News, the Rupert Murdoch owned network which has been criticized for coming to resemble state television.

Even if many of the news journalists maintain their independence, some of the most prominent anchors and hosts show nothing but loyalty to Trump. They’re rewarded with exclusive access to administration officials and to the president himself.

Meanwhile, other outlets are mostly kept at arm’s length.

The press briefing room in the White House, which used to see nearly daily Q&A sessions under previous presidents, has been all but abandoned.

Trump is unusually accessible, but mostly through often chaotic, informal gatherings, while Saturday marks the 48th day since Sanders held a full briefing.

When they’re not being ignored, White House journalists can expect to hear abuse. Trump’s rallies invariably include segments where he encourages the crowd to boo the reporters covering the event.

“This is new,” says Jeff Morosoff, a journalism and media professor at Hofstra University’s Lawrence Herbert School of Communication. “No president has ever been so contentious, insulting and confrontational.”

“I think the day is going to come when one of his followers is going to hurt somebody,” Morosoff warned.

– Sense of humor failure –

For years, WHCA dinners were a chance to let the hair down in a notoriously serious town. Past performers include Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra and Barbra Streisand.

Since the 1980s, comedians have provided entertainment, making gentle and not-so-gentle fun, or “roasting,” the centerpiece of the dinner.

Presidents were expected to give back as good as they got. A standout moment was Obama’s riff in 2011, when one of his comic targets in the VIP-packed audience was none other than Donald Trump.

Last year, though, the jokes fell flat.

Featured comedian Michelle Wolf tore into Sanders and caused as much offense as laughter. Even the WHCA thought it had gone too far, calling her routine “not in the spirit” of the occasion.

Wolf called the WHCA “cowards.”

The association’s president, Olivier Knox, says this year is an opportunity to return to the event’s roots: a gathering to reinforce support for the constitutional right to free speech.

“We’re looking forward to an enjoyable evening of celebrating the First Amendment and great journalists past, present, and future,” he said.

Kim Jong Un and President Moon Jae-in held their first meeting on April 27 last year in the Demilitarized Zone dividing the peninsula amid a rapid diplomatic thaw, paving the way for a historic summit between Kim and US President Donald Trump in Singapore in June.

But one year later, little progress has been made on North Korea’s nuclear weapons, with Pyongyang and Washington deadlocked since a second summit between Trump and Kim in Hanoi in February broke down without a deal.

Moon, who brokered the first meeting between the two mercurial leaders, has tried to salvage the diplomacy although the North has remained largely unresponsive.

Since Hanoi, the North has not attended any of the weekly meetings of the heads of their joint liaison office in Kaesong, and has not taken part in other joint projects.

North Korea did not respond to the South’s invitation this week for a ceremony later Saturday at Panmunjom — where Moon and Kim exchanged warm smiles and hugs — to commemorate their landmark meeting last year.

Instead, the North’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country, which handles inter-Korean relations, urged Seoul Saturday to take “more active measures” to improve ties.

The Kim-Moon summit a year ago had restarted the “ticking of the reunification clock”, it said, but the US was pressuring Seoul to lock steps in their approach towards the nuclear-armed North.

“A grave situation is being created that may see a return to the past of reaching catastrophe in the thickening dangers of war,” it said in a lengthy statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

– ‘Dream and reality’ –

Moon and Kim met three times last year — including a second impromptu encounter after Trump threatened to cancel the Singapore summit just weeks before it was due.

But exchanges between Seoul and Pyongyang have significantly decreased since the failure to reach agreement in Hanoi.

A commentary carried by the South’s conservative Dong-A Ilbo newspaper Saturday noted that inter-Korean relations have returned to the “old pattern” where Seoul unilaterally tries to engage Pyongyang despite being repeatedly snubbed by its neighbour.

“A year ago, the North Korean leader appeared to listen attentively to the words of President Moon on the footbridge (at Panmunjom), but now he is blatantly ignoring the South,” the paper said.

“The celebration event held only by South Korea today presents both dream and reality of the first anniversary,” it added.

Kim slammed the South in a speech to his country’s rubber stamp legislature earlier this month, saying it should not “pose as a meddlesome ‘mediator’ and ‘facilitator'” between the US and the North.

At his first summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin this week, Kim accused the US of acting in “bad faith” in Hanoi and warned the situation “may return to its original state”.

UN experts were only been able reach about 100 of the villages that the Rohingya fled after the Myanmar military launched a deadly crackdown in 2017, UN high commissioner for refugees Filippo Grandi said.

Even in those villages access has been “very restricted”, Grandi told reporters at the end of a tour of refugee camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district, where more than one million Rohingya now live.

Riven by complex ethnic and religious divides, Rakhine is now witnessing deadly battles between the Myanmar army and the Arakan Army (AA), a group that claims to represent the state’s ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and is vying for more autonomy.

The AA has killed at least 22 police officers since fighting ramped up in January.

The UN was to get access under an accord made with the Myanmar government last year to prepare for repatriations.

“The implementation of this agreement has been very slow, and has been particularly slow in the last three-four months” because of the Arakan army insurgency, Grandi told reporters.

Some 740,000 Rohingya refugees fled a military crackdown in August 2017 to cross into Bangladesh where 300,000 members of the persecuted Muslim minority were already in camps.

Many Rohingya refugees who fled Rakhine said there had been mass rapes and slaughters in the villages. UN officials have said the crackdown needs a genocide investigation.

UN officials and diplomats say repatriations are now unlikely to happen.

UN leaders have called on the international community to step up financial support for the huge refugee concentration. Grandi said contributions this year had been lower than expected.

The envoys did not comment on Bangladesh’s plans to move many refugees to an isolated island in the Bay of Bengal.